The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna

Memories of war resurface in this subtle novel set in a Croatian village

T
hroughout the 1990s the break-up of Yugoslavia dominated western media. Night
after night our television screens were filled with images of capture and
carnage as a fractured state fell apart and new nations emerged from the
rubble. But after 9/11 and the War on Terror the media lens swivelled away.
What ­happened, one might wonder, to those who endured the worst horrors in
Europe since the ­Second World War? How did ordinary people survive?

Among those not native to that part of the world, the writer best placed to
answer such ­questions is probably Aminatta Forna, a ­specialist in the
aftermath of conflict. Her first book, The Devil that Danced on Water,
runner-up for the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction in 2002, investigated
the conspiracy surrounding the death of her Sierra Leonean father, an
idealistic doctor and politician who was hanged on a charge of treason. Her
most recent book,